Making Money From A Blog – December Recap

December isn’t the best time for the year when it comes to Internet traffic. People are thinking about gifts and spending time with family than surfing the Internet. As a result of the holidays, the blog received just 94,697 visitors and 184,640 page views. This is well off the 217,876 unique visitors and 329,853 page views posted in November.

With traffic down by over 145,000 page views, you think income would be down by a proportionate amount. However, I’m happy to report that despite the huge drop in traffic, the blog still beat the record $2,123.93 November income. Here is the December earnings breakdown.

Google AdSense: $693.36

Vibrant IntelliTXT: $420.73

TTZ Media: $152.91

Text Link Ads: $508.50

FeedBurner Ads: $345.60

ReviewMe: $200

Direct Ad Sales: $105.00

Affiliate Sales: $195.00

Free Stuff: $168.95

Grand Total: $2,790.05

Traffic went down by 44% but income went up by 30%. If you look at the eCPM stats, the number looks even more impressive. Back in October, blog eCPM was just $3.77. That improved to $6.49 for November. The December eCPM hit a record $15.11, for 400% increase over October! How did I pull this off?

More Revenue Sources

As you can see from the above list, the blog derives its revenue from quite a few sources. When this blog was first monetized, its sole source of income was Google AdSense. Since then I have been adding other ad networks and affiliate programs into the mix. Ad networks that I joined in November started kicking in December. FeedBurner went from $57.14 to $345.60, Text Link Ads (aff) went from $30.00 to $508.50, ReviewMe went from $50.00 to $200.00, and direct ad sales went from zero to $105.00.

I also sold five SEO Book (aff) and signed up two Text Link Ads (aff) advertisers to make $195.00 in affiliate sales. I’m actually quite surprise at how well affiliate marketing works on this blog. In addition, I received $168.95 of free stuff. These are non-cash items, but I wouldn’t have received them if I didn’t run the blog, so I added them to the revenue total. The free stuff I received was a copy of the $79.00 SEO Book and an $89.95 kissing comforter.

If I had stuck with only Google AdSense, the blog would have made just $693.36 instead of $2,790.05. It is a mistake to put all your eggs in Google’s basket. You should always be on the lookout for other ways to monetize your site. However, it’s also important not to go overboard with the advertising. You need to find that balance which will give you maximum return and still give a good user experience.

Some so call gurus will tell you that adding more advertising won’t increase income – that it will only spread out the same income over more sources. This is not true! It has never been true. If you’re running one AdSense unit on your blogs, then try increasing it to three. I guaranteed you’ll make more money. If you’re already at the maximum number of AdSense units, then look at other complimentary advertisings and affiliate programs to add to it. The new ads will not take income away from the old ads.

Digg out, Google In

In October, Google accounted for just 4.8% of blog traffic. That improved to 8.48% in November and 26.16% in December. During this same period, Digg traffic went from 50% down to 2.81%. This is both good and bad. It’s bad in a sense that I lose a very big traffic source – it was Digg that put this blog on the map. It’s good because a Google user is worth a lot more than a Digg user. Traffic from Google is much easier to monetize because Google users click lots of ads, where as Digg users tries to block the ads.

You can see this by looking at the Google AdSense stats. In October, Digg accounted for 50% of traffic and the blog made $740.01 from AdSense with 360,967 page views. In December, Google accounted for a 26% of traffic and the blog made $693.36 from Google with just 184,640 page views. Even though traffic was down by over 145,000 page views, the blog made almost the same amount from Google AdSense because Digg users don’t click on Google ads – most of them won’t even see the ads.

While it’s nice to see Google’s share of traffic increasing, I always get nervous when it gets too high because when you live by the Google, you can die by the Google. Right now, I have nothing to be worry about because while the percentage of Google traffic has gone up, so has the percentage of the direct traffic (from 15.56% in November to 25.59%). That means many people coming from Google are book marking the blog. It also means the reader base is growing.

The problem with Digg is it can mess up growth measurements. You may not be able to repeat the Digg, so the growth is temporary. A better way to measure growth is by home page entries because those are coming from the reader base. In October, the blog received 37,135 visits to the home page. This improved to 46,492 visits in November and 48,824 in December. So, while total traffic maybe down, the blog did experienced real growth.

Lessons Learned

The blog is now making what most people would consider full time income. At $2,800 a month, most bloggers would be able to quit their job and concentrate on their blog full time. Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be able to do this if you just run Google AdSense. The most important lesson to keep in mind when it comes to monetizing a blog is the revenue mix. Find ad sources that will compliment each other and they’ll add to your overall income. Do not put all you advertising eggs in one basket.

Thanks to constant tweaking of the revenue mix, this blog makes $15.11 for every 1,000 page views. How much does your blog make from 1,000 page views? If you’re running just Google Adsense, chances are it’s no where near $15.11.

I wonder if I can break $3,000 in blog revenue for January? You’ll find out next month.

123 thoughts on “Making Money From A Blog – December Recap”

Well there’s a lot involved. Feedburner ad network, and ReviewMe have high entry requirements. Actually it’s been mentioned before that Google’s AdSense is pretty much the only option for small blogs (though I’d personally suggest to work on your content and exposure, rather than getting $10/month, possibly because you spam your friends with links).

Feedburner is exceptionally awesome, because you get ads out to RSS only subscribers, who would not even see AdSense.

Once accepted into ReviewMe, it’s easy to make a noticable contribution reguardless of any traffic drops, and could actually serve as a nice buffer during slower months like December.

With traffic bouncing back up in January, I’m sure that John will be able to break $3000. Good luck!

Firstly congratulations on beating the November $$ figure with a much lesser traffic. Hopefully with the traffic coming back in Jan the only way your $$ number can go is probably upwards.

Still the biggest problem for me is that my traffic is really too small to try many of the options you mention and Google Adsense is pretty much the only option.

I had requested earlier too will request again….

Although your site is a high traffic one, most of the readers of your blog are probably not close to your traffic numbers. Start a series where you can provide your thoughts on how people can get a stable readership and then start thinking about revenue and revenue mix etc !

Awesome John – its these type of real world overview posts that I like best about your blogging. Individually, the pieces of information are generally already known to me, but it helps to see the bigger picture like this (especially as it progresses month by month).

I would also welcome a series towards smaller blogs. Personally I’m more interested in improving my writing, and building up a solid blog, which should be the basics to focus on before monetizing anyways.

John, thanks again for sharing your figures and I hope the steady growth continues. One thing I’m curious about is roughly how much time each month you spend working on this blog to generate that sort of income. Knowing the hours to income ratio would make it easier for me to compare it to working full time for a salary.

Right now, if you search Google for “Star Wars Rose Bowl” One of the entries on my site is about number 3 on the search results. This entry was written by a friend of mine who is the webmaster for the 501st (a Star Wars regiment of real people.)

If you search for “Pokemon Ranger Manaphy Egg” I am the top result.

I know nothing about SEO and Google says my page rank is zero (some sites say -1) so I’m guessing there is some other reason I’m getting top billing in search?

HMTKSteve, having a high pagerank doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be ranked at the top, it’s only a factor of x percent, the actual match with the keywords might be just as important, or even more for that matter.

John – the remark about adding more Google ad blocks is simply not true. Experience will show that over time, fewer ad blocks out perform the maximum given that the initial ad block is properly placed.

Just curious with one stat: whats with IntelliTXT? How many people are actually interested in the ads they provide? Most of them are just “Search Ask.com for Blah”. I’m running them on one of my blogs as well and was surprised to see that people actually click them.

Secondly, congratulations on the revenue PR. I’m going to give some new revenue sources a whirl.

I know my blog is relatively new and it’s information is sporatic. I am definately not a great writer either, but I guess I need to figure out a niche I can use on my blog eh?

Now one thing I’ve noticed is alot of the traffic on my site has been from links I have in signature forms. I have a php created image that I use in my signature to display the top 3 most recent posts. I also noticed most of my traffic comes from the various blog contents I’ve signed up for.

What do people suggest to increase traffic? I understand content is king, and I need more content. Writing skills would be something to enhance as well. My PR among Google will increase when I get a better flow of traffice correct? It’s stuck at 1, which I assume means I am still in their imaginary SandBox.

As for Stew’s comment about IntelliTXT, I acidently click on them. They pop up and freak me out so my instinct is to click on them 😉 Actually when I am skimming over an article and they use IntelliTXT in it, I tend to accidently click on words occationally .

@Tony I do know that AdSense is allowed to be combined with non-content specific ads on the same page, I’m not sure what IntelliTXT serves exactly, but the other ads (text-link-adS) are allowed by Google’s policy.

And like Allen.H says, Google doesn’t change their policy much, not even for bigger players I’m afraid.

[Thanks to constant tweaking of the revenue mix, this blog makes $15.11 for every 1,000 page views. How much does your blog make from 1,000 page views? If you’re running just Google Adsense, chances are it’s no where near $15.11.]

Last month I could get around $12.55 for every 1,000 pageviews from Adsense ONLY as I do not have any other source of income. TLA and others rejected my blogs 🙁

my problem is, I can only get around 500 – 600 page views per DAY from 4 blogs … hiks … 🙁

I just need more traffic …
I have done everything I know about SEO but still traffic so low … 🙁

john, what can you suggest doing in regards to blogging, i dont seem to blog enough, mainly because i dont know what to blog about. do you just have this natural talent to know what to write about, or do you get your content from peoples questions and emails?

Love this blog. I just stumbled upon it because I am monitoring the word CHOW through Google for my “real” employment. I have always wondered how the advertising works and you provide easy to understand explanations.

I’m thinking of starting a non-profit org and one of my goals would be to eventually support its web site through advertising.

The eCPM at TTZ is higher than JohnChow.com. I have stated this in a blog post before; The revenue TTZ generates makes the income from JohnChow.com look like tip money. This is one of the reasons I give it away.

Well John, you are one smart, and lucky, guy to have jumped in – with the right handling – at the right moment. Like I’ve said before, I can only wish I could consider these amounts ‘pocket money’, and with me a lot of people, I’m afraid 😉

IntelliTXT’s 500K page view requirement is based on one domain. You can not combined a bunch of sites to get the 500K. However, once you have one site in, it’s possible to add another site that is below 500K.

Fantastic post. Besides allowing intellitxt ads to coincide with adsense (because you’re John Chow), my understanding was that you were not allowed to discuss adsense revenue. Is this also a “because I’m John Chow” thing?

Since starting a blog (ProductCriticBlog) last month (not as a revenue source but as a follow-up to my product review site), what I’ve been amazed by is organic growth of a site as long as you concentrate on the content and making it useful for people. Forget about monetization is you don’t have the content and the proper intent down pat.

Given that I just started last month, I won’t be in a position to use your advice for awhile but great information for the rest of us.

I can not believe, you can live from your blog. I am a small german blogger, earning about 50 Dollar a month. I should write in english, maybe inside there would be a chance. Your page is really a positive shock for all bloggers i think. Greetings

As John says we cannot use the intelliTXT thing – are there any options and given that I am not generating any great revenue would appreciate if anything is free. I installed some similar thing from Kontera but that does not seem to work at all

It’s great to see that you don’t realy on just one avenue for income. You have a diverse system to bring in income and should be mirrored in others’ blogs. I know I intend to once the content is there.

Wow, I have had ideas but I never pursue because I dont have a clear cut plan how to execute? Mr. Chow how do I get started (inexpensively) Right now I’m low on cash but big on ideas, mostly informational stuff from my experiences hence the blog angle. Thank You.

"How I Went From Zero to Over $100,000 a Month"

The Original Dot Com Mogul

John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the probably yo’ daddy foundation...

John Chow rocketed onto the blogging scene when he showed the income power of blogging by taking his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just two years.